Why Joey Still Doesn't Have A Family On Fuller House

With all of the Season 1 episodes now currently streaming on Netflix, Fuller House has built upon the original show (and the show’s title) by introducing a new generation of Tanners and Gibblers to audiences. But one character whose love life and family life were completely sidelined was impressionist extraordinaire Joey Gladstone. Creator Jeff Franklin and executive producer Robert Boyett weren’t merely interested in making him miserable, though, and Joey’s planned backstory was excised because there wasn’t room for it. According to Boyett:

It just didn’t fit anywhere in the stories we developed. We had Joey – in the stories we were using him – come in for specific reasons. We just haven’t gotten to everything yet, and we don’t get to everything, even in the 13 episodes.

Jeff Franklin says that before the storylines were whittled down and brought to the scripting stage, the writers were playing with the idea of giving Joey a wife and children that live back in Las Vegas, where he’s bigger than Carrot Top. Apparently just mentioning them would have still taken too much effort, so it got left behind altogether.

Which isn’t to say that it’ll stay that way forever. Should Fuller Housestick around for years, we will probably see every character getting their stories expanded and developed. Franklin said as much to TVLine.

We’ll get to see something from Joey [and his family] hopefully in future seasons, should they come out.

I would watch an entire flashback episode from Fuller House that centered on the origin story of Joey and his wife getting together, as the only question I’ll be able to ask if she’s ever introduced would be, “How the hell did that happen?” Dave Coulier plays Joe with all the subtlety of an earthquake, which was weird enough when he was 30 in the early 1990s, but now he’s in his 50s and his sense of humor has gone post-Dad joke. Whoever ends up with him will need to have an extremely specific personality, as will whatever offspring the two managed to put together.

Is it wrong that I’m glad Joey’s life was inferior to literally every single other thing that made it into the cheesefest that was Fuller House Season 1? I mean, this is a batch of episodes that tries to strain emotional reactions out of Kimmy Gibbler and her family situation. Times are weird.

Until we meet the rest of the Family Gladstone, we’ll just assume they’re hanging out with Michelle in New York. In the meantime, you can check out all 13 episodes of Fuller House on Netflix for the most regrettable binge session of your life.